Loni Mundell was 16 years old in November 2008 when she drove along Green River Road Southeast, between Kent and Auburn, to take her 13-year-old stepbrother and 2-year-old cousin to school and daycare on a wet morning.

On a left-turning curve, she lost control of the vehicle. It spun 180 degrees across the centerline, slid down a soft shoulder and rolled down a bank and into the river, which was running high that day.

Mundell managed to get out of the overturned, submerged car, but the boys didn't make it.

She was panicked when officers arrived at the scene, according to the Auburn Police dash-cam recording. She stammered, "How do I live with myself now?" "I killed them," "I don't want to be alive anymore" and "I can't believe that I am a murderer."

"My family is going to hate me, I hate me," she said at one point, according to the transcript. "I hate me."

A police officer assured her multiple times, "There is all kinds of leaves on that road that made it all slick. I can see them from here. It could happen to anybody."

Though the toddler, Hunter Beaupre, was later found strapped in his car seat, the teen, Austin Fuda, was never recovered.

Nearly six years later, the incident continues to hang over the family and is fought over in court.

Mundell, a straight-A student, tested negative for alcohol or any kind of impairment. Evidence indicated she was driving 28 mph in a 35 mph zone. She wasn't using her cell phone at the time of the accident. Though a King County Sheriff's Office memo recommended vehicular homicide charges, prosecutors declined to file charges and instead called for a civil infraction.

Mundell's family believes King County is responsible for the accident. Their attorneys argue that there should have been a guard rail along that stretch of road and that the traffic lanes on the two-lane road were narrower than the width mandated by state law.

But Mundell is the only living witness to the crash who could testify about what happened.

Although prosecutors previously declined to charge her, there is no statute of limitations on vehicular homicide charges and Mundell, now 22, thus feels compelled to plead the Fifth Amendment -- silence -- for fear that whatever she says could be used against her.

So now her family has asked King County Superior Court to grant Mundell immunity from prosecution so that she may speak freely in court about the course of events that morning and defend herself. A judge is scheduled to rule on the matter July 29.

It's created a legal catch-22: If Mundell testifies, anything she says can be used against her as probable cause for possible charges. But her silence, too, can be used by King County in the civil case to cast doubt on Mundell's innocence and bolster her claim to police that she was responsible for the accident.

Mundell has joined with King County as a defendant in the case, even though her family doesn't believe she is at fault. Rather, the family's attorneys believe Mundell is acting against her self-interest by aligning herself with a party who would benefit from pinning the blame in the incident on her. It's the defense attorneys advising her to remain silent.

Attorneys for the family of the victims say King County is using the situation to escape liability for the road conditions they believe caused the accident.

The tragedy is a case of "failure to design or maintain a roadway," attorney James J. Dore Jr. said Wednesday.

The faults attorneys found with the road at the time of the accident have since been remedied, they say. Though there was no guardrail or berm lining the road when Mundell's 2001 Volkswagen Beetle spun out of control, both of those protections have since been installed. Several maple trees, whose leaves coated the road during autumn months, have also been removed in the area.

State law mandates that traffic lanes be 12 feet wide, but reports say the lanes in the crash area were about nine feet wide.

Dore and co-counsel Ann R. Deutscher hope that granting Mundell immunity from any future prosecution in the case will not only help the truth come out at the civil trial, but also allow Mundell to clear her name.

Though a model student before the crash, she was thereafter called a "murderer" at school, Deutscher said.

"She's already been punished enough," she said.

As the attorneys put it in a recent court memo, "Loni remains as much (or more) a victim of these tragic events as Austin Fuda and Hunter Beaupre."

Dore and Deutscher say this case is unlike any either of them have seen in their collective 55 years of practicing law.

King County has no comment in its defense, except the following, released by King County Prosecutor spokesman Dan Donahoe:

"The decline of a criminal case does not confer immunity upon a suspect, and the granting of criminal immunity is, and should be, an extremely rare exercise of power. No immunity has been granted to the driver Loni Mundell.

Lawyers representing the King County Roads Division, a co-defendant in the pending civil lawsuit, have had no involvement in the decisions on criminal liability or immunity."

Deutscher doesn't believe proseuctors would charge Mundell, but says that the possibility of charges will always hang over her head unless she's granted immunity.

"You can't silence a witness by treatening her with a completely bogus criminal prosecution," she said. "They know very well they're never going to charge her."